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At the time Texas raided the YFZ community, I knew very little about CPS. I had a son and two daughters living at the Ranch and a handful of very precious grandchildren. In addition, there were many close personal friends among those caught up in this tragic affair, some of whom I have known for over 40 years. As I heard the reports of the callous treatment of the mothers and children at the hands of CPS, I initially chalked it all up to religious persecution. I still feel that this is the major factor motivating the actions of the state of Texas both in the raid itself and in the continued intervention in the lives of our people. However, as I have studied and written about the events in Texas, I have come to realize that what CPS has been doing to the FLDS people is hardly an anomaly. The great number of children involved in the YFZ kidnapping and the worldwide publicity it has received are not typical, but the appalling truth is that on a smaller scale CPS operates this way every day all across the nation.

 

The anonymous letters of the Hill Country MHMR workers who assisted in providing services for the mothers and children shortly after the raid give the most vivid accounts of CPS mistreatment of the FLDS people as well as show the positive qualities of the mothers and children. 

 

I have no doubt that there are many CPS workers who became involved in social work because they love children and want to help those suffering from abuse. Some of the YFZ parents have told me that their caseworkers are kind and seem genuinely concerned with the welfare of mothers and children. Unfortunately this is not true of the majority of CPS workers and especially of the officials, who seem to be involved in their current line of work not out of a love for children but from an inflated opinion of their own importance and a desire to bully others.

 

Much of the problem with the way CPS operates is that both the federal government and state governments have developed a system of financial incentives that reward CPS for tearing families apart rather than keeping them together. Massive federal spending for child “protection” began in 1974 with CAPA (the Child Abuse and Prevention Act), which was sponsored by Walter Mondale. Funds made available through this act laid the foundation for our present CPS. The real incentives for separating children from their parents, however, are the product of President Bill Clinton’s 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act. 

 

On the surface, the rationale for this legislation is appealing. Take children who are languishing in foster care and adopt them out so that they can experience the security of a permanent home and a stable and loving family. The reality of how this has worked out in practice is a whole different story. The goal of the Adoption and Safe Families Act was to double by 2002 the number of children in foster care who are adopted or otherwise permanently placed. For each child adopted out of foster care, states were offered cash incentives of $4000 to $6000 multiplied by the percentage by which the state exceeds its baseline adoption number, assigned to each state according to population. Thus states must maintain an increase each year to keep the funds coming. States typically offer CPS additional bonuses for adoptions. (See “Child ‘Protection’ is BIG Business!”) To continue these generous federal incentives requires not just adopting children out of foster care but having an ever-increasing flow of children into the foster-care system. Texas currently has 32,000 children in state conservatorship, and this number grows steadily.

 

The Department of Health and Human Services, which administers federal funds for child protection, is authorized either directly or through grants and contracts to provide states with technical assistance to support “the goal of encouraging more adoptions…; expediting the termination of parental rights; … [encouraging] the fast tracking of children who have not attained 1 year of age into pre-adoptive placements; and… [developing] programs that place children into pre-adoptive placements without waiting for termination of parental rights.” 

 

How this all works out in practice is apparent in interviews with social workers conducted in November, 2007, by News Channel 32 in Louisville, Kentucky, as part of a 3-year investigation of CPS. Pat Moore, a former CPS worker who had just won a $380,000 law suit, claimed she had been fired from her job for refusing to arrange an adoption into a home where both parents had criminal records, a son living in the home had multiple felonies, and a convicted sex offender visited and sometimes cared for the children. Moore’s supervisor had told her to let the adoption proceed quickly, and Moore’s attorney claimed that the motivation for this haste was the federal incentives for adoption.

 

Another worker, who remained unidentified for fear of retaliation against herself and family, said that “federal and state money comes from statistics. You get praised…for terminating rights and adopting kids out immediately.” She also said that she had seen someone successfully place an order for adoption by indicating a desire to have the children of a family in distress. CPS removed the children from the family and filled the order.

 

The retaliation feared by this worker is a very real thing. News Channel 32 also reported: “Venessa Shanks had her kids taken away and, when she fought back, her relatives had their children taken away. Then after she won in court, her attorney’s child was taken away.” Former CPS workers interviewed said that such retaliation is common.

 

Just how widespread CPS abuses are is apparent in a report by the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. Anonymous phone calls, such as the one that sparked the YFZ raid, are frequently used as tools for harassment. Children are encouraged, often through “educational” comic books, to turn in their parents or other adults for such “offenses” as spanking a child. CPS workers typically take the approach of assuming that if abuse is reported then it must be going on, although two thirds of the reports on child-protective “hotlines” are false. Parents may have their names placed in the state’s “central register” of suspected child abusers without any court hearing solely at the discretion of a CPS worker. 

 

Workers make no effort to inform parents beforehand of their rights and often search homes or strip-search children without a warrant. Parents who say “no” may be threatened with being labeled “uncooperative” and having their children removed from the home on the spot. The 14-day hearing in the YFZ case was widely criticized for violating due process, but such sham procedures are commonplace in child-removal cases. A seasoned CPS attorney faces bewildered and impoverished parents, who almost never get their children back at these hearings. If they are lucky, they may have their children returned at the next hearing 30 or 90 days later.

 

Of those reports of child abuse that are substantiated, the majority are for “deprivation of necessities.” The parents are poor and may not be providing adequate food, clothing, or housing. Studies have shown that except in the most severe cases of child abuse, even a poor parent is better than a good foster parent. Yet there are tremendous financial incentives for tearing families apart and no incentives for keeping them together.

 

If all of this suggests that the United States is fast becoming a police state, it is because that is exactly what is happening. CPS abuses are affecting many more people than just the FLDS. True adversarial hearings are not a part of child-abuse cases. With the courts in collusion with CPS in deciding what is “best for the child,” parents in these cases have fewer rights than accused murderers. 

 

There are many instances of actual child abuse, and these children do need protection. But CPS as it exists is doing much more harm than good. At the least, any financial incentives need to be restructured so that they encourage CPS to keep families together. I believe that we need to go beyond this and dismantle the entire CPS structure. This is clearly an agency that is out of control.